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Comment by Auracle | Hacker News Reader

> And most of these supplies and prep are going to last what, ~4 days before they spoil?

Rice lasts a very long time. Tortillas last a long time in the fridge (you can probably freeze them?). Freeze the meat. Beans last forever. Sour cream and cheese last a long time in the fridge and you'll certainly use them for other things.

Guacamole/avocados/other veggies are potentially harder to deal with for long term storage, but that depends and it looks like there are some options. Salsa also keeps for many, many months.

As far as time goes, if you're single, many of the ingredients could be cooked in a batch and then frozen, even as whole burritos.

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You're expanding the scope to a much larger process and pattern of behavior that has to be undertaken and managed. Sure it's doable, and you can save a bunch of money that way. But as a one line throwaway comment it's still nonsense.

Also freezing things or letting them sit in the fridge for weeks tends to change the texture. A main point of a burrito shop is the fresh ingredients.

Well, you also don't have to freeze anything. When you cook almost every meal, you end up using most ingredients before they go bad. The ingredients for a burrito are pretty basic and can be used to make all sorts of things.

"cook almost every meal" is exactly the type of "expanding the scope" I was talking about. Cooking food yourself is a well-known way of saving money. Starting by trying to reproduce burrito shop burritos is not the way to get there.

To you, that's expanding the scope. To many, many people that's just the way we live, the way our parents lived, etc. We eat food from a restaurant maybe...twice a month? Usually fast food because we're out and about.

If you have the money and you can stay healthy eating that way, go for it. But your original comment seems absolutely ridiculous to anyone that regularly cooks. I sincerely don't mean this in a mean way, but it was quite ignorant, as if making burritos was some herculean task and just what are you going to do with all of the staples foods that can be used in so many other recipes that you don't use?

> To you, that's expanding the scope

No, I'm not talking about my own life, but rather the scope of the original response - making it out as something simple you can just do, rather than an undertaking in both prep time and resource management.

> We eat food from a restaurant maybe...twice a month?

I'm right there too at this point in my life. But it's still absurd to suggest someone casually cook a number of dishes that would make a decent Thanksgiving dinner. "Skip the burrito and pack a sandwich" would be reasonable advice, but we have no idea how much OP is already doing that! Rather they merely brought up the price of a burrito for a benchmark about price inflation. Rather than accept the point about price inflation, people then shot the messenger with some fantasy of easy frugality.

> what are you going to do with all of the staples foods that can be used in so many other recipes

You've got guac/pico that want to go bad in a day, and rice/beans/protein that want to go bad in ~4 days. So many other recipes like... more burritos or a different Mexicanesque meal that tastes just like burritos?

> You're expanding the scope to a much larger process and pattern of behavior that has to be undertaken and managed. Sure it's doable, and you can save a bunch of money that way

No, absolutely not. This sort of thing is seriously just the baseline of how we should be expecting people to act in society. Buying stuff for one meal at a time is ridiculously decadent behavior and should not be affordable

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